Paul Bailey on crime writer Andrea Camilleri | Books | The Guardian Share on Messenger Close Andrea Camilleri is the most successful author in Italy, yet little more than a decade ago he was a virtually unknown septuagenarian who had written a handful of historical novels, including the intriguing Il birraio di Preston (The Brewer from Preston, 1995), set in his native Sicily. In 1994, however, he had invented Detective Inspector Salvo Montalbano in the novel La forma dell'acqua (The Shape of Water), and now both he and his hero are household names. It was never Camilleri's intention to write more than a couple of Montalbano books, and only when the second and most original story, Il cane di terracotta (The Terracotta Dog, 1996), was greeted with enthusiasm by critics and readers alike did Camilleri decide to put his middle-aged policeman through all sorts of increasingly complicated criminal hoops. The crimes are nothing if not topical: illegal immigrants, drug-peddling, prostitution, fraud and money-laundering.

A recent villain is a doctor in thrall to the Mafia, who provides them with human hearts, livers and kidneys. In the small fictional Sicilian town of Vigàta, where Montalbano is based, the vilest things are seen to happen. Camilleri, who was born in 1925 in Porto Empedocle, in the province of Agrigento, came to writing late, publishing his first book in 1978, when he was 53. Before then he had been an active member of the Communist party and a distinguished drama teacher and theatre director. He was also a television producer. For more than three decades he has worked in Rome, where he still lives with his Milanese wife. His phenomenal success is the cause of much amusement to him. The most recent Montalbano mystery, La vampa d'agosto (August Blaze), in which his hero becomes perilously close to his enemies, came out in mid-April and has sold more than 500,000 copies. Yet he has no illusions on the subject of literary fame.

He talks with passionate enthusiasm about Carlo Emilio Gadda, whose Quer pasticciaccio brutto de Via Merulana (That Awful Mess on Via Merulana, 1957) he describes without hesitation as the "greatest Italian novel of the 20th century". He uses words such as "brave" and "courageous" in regard to Gadda, another late starter who came to writing after a lifetime in engineering. Camilleri acknowledges this audacious experimental novelist as an inspiration. He loves the way in which Gadda employs non-literary Italian in his masterpiece - slang, dialect terms and phrases, even the dry language of academic textbooks. Gadda, like James Joyce, is a translator's nightmare and, as a consequence, the two novels he wrote in old age have not fared well outside Italy. Camilleri reveres him, not least for the sheer joy he took in the act of composition.

Camilleri only became really wealthy in his 70s, remains true to his left-wing principles and is eagerly awaiting the protracted downfall of Silvio Berlusconi, whose control over the Italian media he alludes to scathingly in Il giro di boa (Rounding the Mark, 2003). Camilleri shows interest in very few crime writers, reserving particular praise for his fellow Marxist Dashiell Hammett, whom he considers infinitely superior to Raymond Chandler, whose plots he finds incredible. He is very much aware of the literary legacy he has inherited from other Sicilian novelists. His grandfather knew Luigi Pirandello, and Camilleri recalls meeting him once as a small boy. He respects Pirandello's plays, on which he has worked in the theatre, but it is the writer of short stories who haunts him. (These were translated into English in 1959, and a selection of the best appeared in 1965 - both books are long out of print.) Another great Sicilian became one of Camilleri's dearest friends.

He speaks of Leonardo Sciascia with admiration and affection, an admiration shared by Montalbano, who reads Sciascia's 1963 undoubted masterwork Il consiglio d'Egitto (The Council of Egypt) on one of those rare evenings when he isn't questioning suspects or risking his life with his daring methods of detection. Sciascia's novel is set in 18th-century Palermo and is concerned with a breathtakingly impudent forgery. What starts in comedy ends in horror and melodrama. Its appeal for Camilleri is easy to understand, since his Montalbano mysteries shift effortlessly from the comic to the grotesque. Camilleri's translator, the American poet Stephen Sartarelli, told me that there is something of Sciascia in the character of Montalbano. Sciascia entered politics in middle age and stood out in the Italian senate as a model of honesty and decency. His speeches were noted for being laconic, the rarest of virtues in a politician in any culture. His lean prose is infused with irony and scepticism, and these Voltairean qualities are evident in Camilleri's narrative technique.

Montalbano is honest and decent, and he is happiest when the people he is interrogating cut the crap and speak the truth. There is a melancholy side to his nature, too, never more expressive than when he is confronting the sadness inherent in certain human relationships. The saddest of all to date is dramatised in Il ladro di merendine (The Snack Thief, 1996), in which François, the son of a Tunisian prostitute, Karima, and a French itinerant worker, is caught stealing the lunchboxes of other schoolchildren. Karima, now a single mother, has ended up in Vigàta, where she has found work as a very obliging domestic. Then she disappears and François is left to his own desperate devices. It soon becomes apparent that the hapless little thief is as frightened and unhappy as he is hungry. Professor Natale Tedesco from the University of Palermo has written an article on the Montalbano books in which he emphasises the words "comic" and "ironic". The novels are indeed funny, and that is one of the reasons why they are so popular.

Some of the jokes are esoteric, such as the running gag about the book Judge Lo Bianco has been writing for years: The Life and Exploits of Rinaldo and Antonio Lo Bianco, Masters of Jurisprudence at the University of Girgenti at the Time of King Martin the Younger (1402-1409). That title alone tells the reader all he needs to know of the judge's character. Then there is Catarella, the desk sergeant who answers the switchboard at the police station and mishears almost everything he is told. He speaks his very own brand of sawn-off Sicilian, which Sartarelli clearly enjoys translating. He is like one of those genial half-wits, gabbling away in Cockney, who crop up in Dickens. Yet the wily Camilleri invests this mangler of language and logic with a talent he denies to the intelligent and well-read Montalbano, for Catarella is a genius at the computer, the manifold complications of which are a mystery Montalbano is destined never to solve. Montalbano has a long-term girlfriend called Livia, who lives and works in Genoa.

Whenever the heroic cop is especially lovelorn, Livia is happy to adjust her schedule and hop on the next plane to Palermo to calm and comfort him. She just happens to be in Vigàta when François is captured, and the child brings out all her dormant maternal feelings. He quickly responds to her loving attentiveness, and Montalbano contemplates the possibility of being not only a husband, but a father as well. The scenes in Montalbano's house overlooking the sea, with the detective experiencing jealousy as Livia and François become ever more attached, are written with a tenderness that never degenerates into sentimentality. Are the Montalbano novels formulaic in essence? Yes, of course they are, but Camilleri's chosen formula allows him the freedom to explore any number of interesting and dissolute byways. Perhaps Montalbano's most endearing characteristic is his passion for good food. He is always dismayed when his second-in-command, Inspector Mimì Augello, sprinkles an excess of Parmesan over a subtly flavoured dish. Augello is a dedicated womaniser, whereas his chief remains faithful to Livia, in spite of the many temptations he has to resist.

Women of all ages find Montalbano attractive, none more so than the beautiful Swede, Ingrid Sjostrom, who is married to a wealthy Sicilian and, in the first book in the series, abused by her father-in-law. Ingrid, according to Camilleri, is every Italian man's idea of a blonde bombshell. She has no religious scruples regarding sexual gratification, while her skill at the wheel of a sports car would incur the envy of Michael Schumacher. Whenever Montalbano needs to get from one part of the island to another in double-quick time, Sjostrom is invariably at hand to transport him. Every so often, she spends the night with him in the beach house, but Montalbano can be relied upon to leap from the bed as soon as Sjostrom gets seriously frisky. The very last Montalbano mystery has already been written. Camilleri, now 81 and a dedicated and defiant chain-smoker, has perhaps his own mortality in mind.

In recent years he has published a collection of vituperative articles about Berlusconi and some memoirs of Sicily, and hopes to produce a few more Montalbano novels before the final one is published. Montalbano is in his 50s, still not married to Livia, and deeply conscious that the battle against crime and corruption is unending. His loyal team continues to give him support, as does Nicolò Zito, the news presenter on the Free Channel television network (which isn't owned, it is implied, by Berlusconi, unlike the more conservative Televigàta). Zito is there to answer Montalbano's every query and to give out information that often lures the villains from their hiding places. The books begin in the age of the lira, but the euro is the accepted currency in the most recent titles. Cellphones are regularly employed. Yet, for all these nods to modernity, the Montalbano mysteries have a timeless feel about them. They are the books of a wise old man who has lived a lot, eaten well and versed himself in the best Italian and foreign literature.

Only in Camilleri will you find a sex-crazed young woman discussing the merits of Kafka after Montalbano has removed her hand from his genitals. Montalbano, in melancholy vein, recalls lines by Montale and Ungaretti, and in La gita a Tindari (Excursion to Tindari, 2000), when he is feeling ashamed of being a policeman, he remembers the poem Pasolini wrote in 1968 at the time of the student demonstrations in Rome. The unpredictable Pasolini sides with the police on that occasion, dismissing the privileged students as self-indulgent and bourgeois. There are sly comments on Italian life and culture in each of the novels, some of which Sartarelli has to explain in the informative notes at the back. Who is Mike Bongiorno, for example? I would describe him as Italian TV's answer to Des O'Connor - cringe-makingly vivacious and suspiciously younger than springtime. The television series Montalbano, which is a big hit in Italy and Australia but yet to be shown in Britain, has of necessity to omit some of the more obviously literary asides, while retaining Camilleri's brilliant dialogue.

His knowledge of the theatre has proved invaluable when it comes to writing conversation. Five of the Montalbano mysteries, all expertly translated by Sartarelli, are available from Picador. They deserve to be read in the sequence they were written: The Shape of Water, The Terracotta Dog, The Snack Thief, The Voice of the Violin and Excursion to Tindari, which has just been published. The Scent of the Night (that "scent", Sartarelli insists, ought to be "smell"), Rounding the Mark and The Patience of the Spider will appear next year. Camilleri has his detractors, but they tend to be the kind of people who rate plot above characterisation and prefer suspense to what one might call human interest. The real Sicily lives in his pages - its smells, its tastes (I have already cooked a couple of the dishes Montalbano enjoys most) and, above all, its language. Sicily, in turn, is proud of him. His birthplace of Porto Empedocle, on which Vigàta is based, has changed its name to Vigàta.

I should like to think that this honour pleases him as much, if not more, than his astonishing sales figures. · Excursion to Tindari by Andrea Camilleri is published by Picador The Snack Thief - Andrea Camilleri - Google Books Andrea Camilleri 1 Review In the third book in Andrea Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano series, the urbane and perceptive Sicilian detective exposes a viper's nest of government corruption and international intrigue in a compelling new case. When an elderly man is stabbed to death in an elevator and a crewman on an Italian fishing trawler is machine-gunned by a Tunisian patrol boat off Sicily's coast, only Montalbano suspects the link between the two incidents. His investigation leads to the beautiful Karima, an impoverished housecleaner and sometime prostitute, whose young son steals other schoolchildren's midmorning snacks. But Karima disappears, and the young snack thief's life-as well as Montalbano's-is on the line . . .

From inside the book What people are saying - Write a review The snack thief User Review - Not Available - Book Verdict Unlike American movies, in which the detective can identify a suspect from a license plate number in less than two minutes, solving a crime in Italy is a bit more complicated: "One time they'd made ... Read full review Review: The Snack Thief (Inspector Montalbano #3) User Review - Shannon - Goodreads I'm starting to understand and enjoy Inspector Montalbano. The humor in this one was much more evident and Camilleri shows us a bit more about how Montalbano ticks - his history and his way of ...

Read full review Contents View all » Common terms and phrases Ahmed Moussa Aisha already ANDREA CAMILLERI Buscaino Cannatello carabinieri Catarella Chief colonel commissioner Cosentino Cozzo Dhahab door drawer elevator eyes Fahrid father Fazio Fiacca fishing boat floor Francois front fuck Galluzzo hand headquarters heard Hello hour husband inside Inspector Montalbano Jacomuzzi Karima killed kitchen knife Lapecora Listen little boy Livia living Lohengrin Pera looked Marinella Mazara Mimi Augello minutes Montalbano asked Montalbano felt Montelusa morning mother murder never Nicolo night o'clock old woman opened patrol boat Pintacuda Pippo Baudo police prefect Prestia Salita Granet Salvo San Calogero Santopadre Signora Antonietta sitting sleep sorry Spadaccia started Stephen Sartarelli stopped sure talk television tell There's things thought thousand lire told took Trapani Tunis Tunisian turned Valente Valledolmo Vigata wait What's widow wife About the author (2003) Andrea Camilleri's Montalbano mystery series, bestsellers in Italy and Germany, has been adapted for Italian television and translated into German

, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, Japanese, Dutch, and Swedish.

He lives in Rome. Stephen Sartarelli lives in upstate New York. · Yesterday at 11:30am · In the latest Inspector Montalbano novel, A VOICE IN THE NIGHT, Salvo and his team have one body (present) and two bodies (missing) to contend with. In other words, the ‘clients’ are adding up! A VOICE IN THE NIGHT is out now in hardback at . · January 17 at 11:17am · There are few characters who eat as well as Inspector Montalbano. In case you missed it, Kate Young for The Little Library Café, part of the The Guardian Books Network, talks us through how to prepare a classic Sicilian dish that featured in THE TERRACOTTA DOG. Feeling hungry? Go to to find out more. And, leave a HEART if this is a dish you already love.

· January 11 at 4:58am · “Why should he have so many scruples in dealing with people who didn’t even know what scruples were?” In the latest Inspector Montalbano novel, A VOICE IN THE NIGHT, Salvo’s usual annoyance with people is pushed to the absolute limits. · January 8 at 11:45pm · In the 15th Montalbano novel THE DANCE OF THE SEAGULL, after getting involved in his own secret investigations, Fazio goes missing and Montalbano launches a desperate search for his lost friend. We just love this new paperback cover for THE DANCE OF THE SEAGULL – available on 26th January – and we can’t wait to hear what you think. · January 7 at 3:43am · Between Capo d'Orlando and Milazzo on the Palermo-Messina motorway there’s a large church perched dramatically on a rock, high above the sea. This is the Sanctuary of the Black Madonna of Tindari.

It may well be a place of pilgrimage, but, when characters in EXCURSION TO TINDARI make a trip there, nothing is as it first appears. Have you been to visit il Santuario della Madonna del Tindari? · December 26, 2016 at 3:33am · In case you weren’t aware, Montalbano has always been hopeless with dates, holidays, anniversaries, and similar drudgeries, and always forgot them. Where there should be dates he saw nothing but a dense fog. So please, do forgive him his somewhat tardy best wishes. · December 24, 2016 at 12:12pm · As the Italians among us will know, today, after months of preparation and practice, families will be sitting down to their Christmas Eve dinner. In some families, there’s even the tradition of eating 24 different treats in a marathon 4-5 hour eating session. Let the serious eating begin! So, what’s being served at your Christmas Eve table this year?

· December 22, 2016 at 11:32pm · There are some things that happen to us which, if known, we would never be allowed to live down. Salvo Montalbano’s little secret is that he ran out of fuel and ended up stranded on the side of the road. When help came he lied about his name (Claudio Martinez) and his occupation (accountant)... because no one must EVER know that Inspector Montalbano was rescued by the carabinieri. What’s your most embarrassing moment? · December 21, 2016 at 3:38am · If you love the Inspector Montalbano novels you’re going to get an absolute kick out of how the people of Vigàta welcome their new out-of-towner Prefect, Eugenio Bortuzzi. Andrea Camilleri’s standalone novel THE BREWER OF PRESTON is a rip-roaring journey into 1870s Sicily that you won’t want to miss. It’s out in paperback in the UK on 12th January and can now be pre-ordered at .

The Shape of Water - Books on Google Play The Shape of Water ( 36) Description The Shape of Water is the first in Andrea Camilleri's wry, brilliantly compelling Sicilian crime series, featuring Inspector Montalbano. The goats of Vigàta once grazed on the trash-strewn site still known as the Pasture. Now local enterprise of a different sort flourishes: drug dealers and prostitutes of every flavour. But their discreet trade is upset when two employees of the Splendour Refuse Collection Company discover the body of engineer Silvio Luparello, one of the local movers and shakers, apparently deceased in flagrante at the Pasture. The coroner's verdict is death from natural causes - refreshingly unusual for Sicily. But Inspector Salvo Montalbano, as honest as he is streetwise and as scathing to fools and villains as he is compassionate to their victims, is not ready to close the case - even though he's being pressured by Vigàta's police chief, judge, and bishop.

Picking his way through a labyrinth of high-comedy corruption, delicious meals, vendetta firepower, and carefully planted false clues, Montalbano can be relied on, whatever the cost, to get to the heart of the matter. The Shape of Water is followed by the second in this phenomenal series, The Terracotta Dog. Andrea Camilleri 2 $11.99 Two deaths lead Inspector Montalbano into investigations of corruption and power in the twentieth installment of the New York Times bestselling series Montalbano investigates a... 2 $9.99 In the 17th installment of the New York Times bestselling series, a lovely burglary victim bewitches Inspector Montalbano A rash of burglaries has got Salvo Montalbano stumped.... 2 2 $11.99 In time for Andrea Camilleri’s 90th birthday, the nineteenth installment in his irresistible New York Times–bestselling Inspector Montalbano Mystery series “In Sicily, where people...

2 $6.99 Following the long-running success he has enjoyed on bestseller lists in Europe, Inspector Salvo Montalbano is now winning over American readers and critics alike as “one of the most engaging prota... 2 2 $5.99 The number of Inspector Montalbano fans will continue to grow with this ingenious new novel featuring the earthy and urbane Sicilian detective. Half the retirees in Vigáta have invested their savin... 2 The sixteenth Sicilian mystery in the irresistible New York Times bestselling Inspector Montalbano series A hail of bullets interrupts a period of dead calm. An elderly brothe... 2 2 $4.99 The latest from the New York Times bestselling author of The Potter's Field, winner of the Crime Writers' Association's International Dagger Award, and The Age of Doubt<... 2 2 $3.99 Food, love, and murder—Sicilian style—in the gripping eleventh installment of The New York Times bestselling Montalbano mystery series. Things are not going well for Inspect...

2 2 $9.99 "The novels of Andrea Camilleri breathe out the sense of place, the sense of humor, and the sense of despair that fill the air of Sicily." -Donna Leon 2 $4.99 $3.82 In this mystery novella featuring Inspector Montalbano, a deadly accident at a building site prompts a search with shocking revelations Yesterday morning around seven thirty, an Alban... 2 36 total A Google User THE SHAPE OF WATER An elegant translation of the first in a popular Italian series, in which world-weary, empathetic Sicilian Inspector Salvo Montalbano is handed a hot potato when the body of Silvio Luparello, a local politico, is found in the Pasture, the little town of Vigata's red-light district. The death seems to have occurred in flagrante of natural causes, but Montalbano's instincts tell him something is bookwoman247 LibraryThing Review This is the first in the Inspector Monalbano series. I very much enjoyed this police procedural which was set in Sicily.

As you would expect from the Sicilian stereotype it was liberally sprinkled Neutiquam_Erro LibraryThing Review Someone asked me read this book and determine whether it was literature or not. Of course, this raises all sorts of questions as to what constitutes literature, none of which I will attempt to answer bookbuyer LibraryThing Review I love this series. The atmosphere, the outspokeness of the characters, the food, the scenery, and so on. Try to catch the Italian television series made from these books starring Luca Zingaretti. Fluffyblue LibraryThing Review This was my first introduction to Inspector Montalbano, and I have to say I loved this book. Camilleri's writing style is very warm and his characters are very much alive (or dead as the case may be tututhefirst LibraryThing Review This was a delightful story, with an intelligent hero, and entirely believable events.

The cast of characters had me roaring with laughter at times--reminiscent of my italian uncles sitting around my Critic reviews A Google User Kirkus - Jane Doe THE SHAPE OF WATER An elegant translation of the first in a popular Italian series, in which world-weary, empathetic Sicilian Inspector Salvo Montalbano is handed a hot potato when the body of Silvio Luparello, a local politico, is found in the Pasture, the little town of Vigata's red-light district. The death seems to have occurred in flagrante of natural causes, but Montalbano's instincts tell him something is bookwoman247 LibraryThing LibraryThing Review This is the first in the Inspector Monalbano series. I very much enjoyed this police procedural which was set in Sicily. As you would expect from the Sicilian stereotype it was liberally sprinkled Neutiquam_Erro LibraryThing LibraryThing Review Someone asked me read this book and determine whether it was literature or not. Of course, this raises all sorts of questions as to what constitutes literature, none of which I will attempt to answer bookbuyer LibraryThing LibraryThing Review I love this series.

The atmosphere, the outspokeness of the characters, the food, the scenery, and so on. Try to catch the Italian television series made from these books starring Luca Zingaretti. Fluffyblue LibraryThing LibraryThing Review This was my first introduction to Inspector Montalbano, and I have to say I loved this book. Camilleri's writing style is very warm and his characters are very much alive (or dead as the case may be tututhefirst LibraryThing LibraryThing Review This was a delightful story, with an intelligent hero, and entirely believable events. The cast of characters had me roaring with laughter at times--reminiscent of my italian uncles sitting around my TadAD LibraryThing LibraryThing Review I picked this up because a fair number of other LibraryThing members have enjoyed it but, I have to say, it didn't work for me.

The locale (Sicily) was exotic and interesting but that's about it for richardderus LibraryThing LibraryThing Review Rating: 4* of five The Publisher Says: Andrea Camilleri's novels starring Inspector Montalbano have become an international sensation and have been translated from Italian into eight languages bell7 LibraryThing LibraryThing Review Two garbage collectors find a dead politician in a car parked on the notorious Pasture, the local place where people go to find a prostitute. Signor Lubarello died of a heart attack, but the situation Fernandame LibraryThing LibraryThing Review Audiobook - Very good series - i read the second one and decided to start series from beginning. Smiler69 LibraryThing LibraryThing Review In the first of the Montalbano series, we find our Sicilian detective trying to solve a case involving the suspicious death of a local politician. The man has been found dead in his car, apparently of jasonlf LibraryThing LibraryThing Review This police procedural is set in Sicily and has a plot grounded in the byzantine and corrupt local politics.

The plot itself moves along and maintains interest but is not particularly thrilling tulikangaroo LibraryThing LibraryThing Review I read the fourth book in the series, Voice of the Violin, and enjoyed it immensely, so I decided to read the rest of the series from the beginning. Salvo Montalbano is an experienced and insightful Crazymamie LibraryThing LibraryThing Review I am told that these books only get better, and if that is true, how could you possibly resist a trip through Inspector Montalbano's world? These police procedurals that are set in Italy are full of DeltaQueen50 LibraryThing LibraryThing Review The first in his Inspector Montalbano series, The Shape of Water by Andrea Camilleri was a very enjoyable excursion to Sicily. As opposed to some of the darker European crime stories, Montalbano has Berly LibraryThing LibraryThing Review The Pasture is home to drug dealers and prostitutes. While working there one morning, two workers from the Splendour Refuse Collection Company find the dead body of Silvio Lupanello in his car in a thornton37814 LibraryThing LibraryThing Review Inspector Montalbano investigates a politician's death in this first installment.

Although the death is ruled to be natural causes, Montalbano is not convinced that is the case. While the mystery labfs39 LibraryThing LibraryThing Review I know this is probably a very good mystery deserving far more than 3*, but I am just not a mystery fan. I try every now and then, especially when a book is supposed to be very good, but I never quite everfresh1 LibraryThing LibraryThing Review This police mystery has likable character, good, sometimes very funny writing - which seems was preserved by excellent translation - and interesting backdrop (Sicily). I found the plot somewhat auntieknickers LibraryThing LibraryThing Review Yet another police procedural set in Italy, but they are all so different. This one is in Sicily and the setting and characters are quite different from Magdalen Nabb's, Michael Dibdin's, and Donna nmele LibraryThing LibraryThing Review I liked Camillleri's parody of the stereotypes Italians, and Americans, have of Sicilians, like the Mafia war in which local families kill each other in turn, on schedule. He's also written an engaging mystery! bookswoman LibraryThing LibraryThing Review I didn't enjoy this a much as I thought I might.

It was an okay mystery and an interesting look at life in Italy but for some reason it didn't capture my attention so that I felt I had to keep reading novelcommentary LibraryThing LibraryThing Review I picked this up between reading other things and It tells the story of an investigation by the Sicilian investigator Salvo Montalbano, which I understand to be Andrea Camilleri's first mystery in this series. His character is an interesting portrait and the story involving. Fernhill LibraryThing LibraryThing Review light detective story, interesting because it is set in Sicily. Well written, easy 2 hour read. nosajeel LibraryThing LibraryThing Review This police procedural is set in Sicily and has a plot grounded in the byzantine and corrupt local politics. The plot itself moves along and maintains interest but is not particularly thrilling enemyanniemae LibraryThing LibraryThing Review I believe that I might have enjoyed this book more had there been a different narrator. I listened to an audiobook version of this title and I simply did not like the narrator. There was something mirrani LibraryThing LibraryThing Review A political mystery written out in a relaxed way, The Shape of Water was a quick, enjoyable read.

The book deals with some very adult situations, but when you talk about a suspected homicide, that kisigler LibraryThing LibraryThing Review This book is set in Sicily and I picked it up because after reading the Girl With the Dragon Tatoo books in quick succession, I was looking for something warmer and lighter. While this didn’t turn out Andrea Camilleri: a life in writing | Books | The Guardian A life in ... Andrea Camilleri: a life in writing 'In many crime novels, the events seem detached from the context. I deliberately decided to smuggle in a critical commentary on my times' The Sicilian mystery writer Andrea Camilleri. Photograph: CENDAMO LEONARDO/AFP/Getty Images Friday 6 July 2012 17.55 EDT First published on Friday 6 July 2012 17.55 EDT Share on Messenger Close When we talk about a writer being "famous", the term is often loosely used: many winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature and the stars of literary magazines would achieve little name recognition in high streets. But, in Italy, it rapidly becomes clear, Andrea Camilleri is seriously well-known.

In a café near the Vatican, preparing for our interview, I have on the table a stack of the English editions of his series of novels – most recently, The Potter's Field – about the Sicilian detective Salvo Montalbano. Customers and waiters, recognising the name on the covers but not the design or titles, swoop to pick up the books and whoop "Camilleri!" or "Montalbano!", wanting to know the reason for this immersion in one of Italy's most celebrated writers, who is also a media celebrity from his political punditry on television. He is so recognisable that a TV comedian, Fiorelli, does a popular impression of him. When I tell one woman that I have come to interview the author, she adopts a bad-news face and says: "Oh, no! Wrong place!

He lives in Sicily!" In fact, Camilleri comes from Sicily – he was born in Porto Empedocle in 1925 – and on the day we meet is about to go home for the summer, but he mainly lives and works in an apartment on a high floor of a mansion block in a wealthy section of Rome, close to the headquarters of RAI, the Italian broadcaster for whom he long worked and which now produces a top-rating Montalbano TV series ( screened by BBC4 in Britain ). This series has extended the renown of the character and his creator; the increasing impact of the books outside Italy was also recognised last week when Camilleri received the International Dagger, the highest foreign honour of the British Crime Writers Association. The living room of his home in Rome has books neatly shelved from floor to ceiling. Lighting one of many cigarettes – the suppleness of his mind and body at 86 defy medical opinion on the risks of chain-smoking – Camilleri indicates a central bookshelf, explaining that this contains "my most important authors".

Here are the complete works of James Joyce, Georges Simenon and two fellow Sicilians: Leonardo Sciascia (1921-1989), a pioneer of Italian crime writing with books including The Day of the Owl, and Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936), whose plays, including Six Characters in Search of an Author, Camilleri directed during a long career in theatre, and whose short stories influence his prose fiction. Sciascia was a close friend and remains a posthumous inspiration. "I call him the electrician Sciascia. What I mean is that, when I feel like my batteries are low, I take up a book by Leonardo, I open it, I read two pages and my batteries are recharged." Pointing to the many volumes of Pirandello, the writer explains that there is a statue of the 1934 Nobel laureate in Porto Empedocle. Recently, the authorities decided to place nearby an image of Inspector Montalbano, as part of a tribute to Camilleri that also included the extraordinary step of officially adding to the town's name the word "Vigàta", the fictional location of his cop.

Laughing throatily, the writer explains: "Pirandello, in his statue, has his finger pointing like this …" – he makes his hand into a child's pretend gun. "And, because of where the Montalbano statue is, it's as if he's pointing and saying: 'What are you doing here?'" Until he was almost 70, Camilleri was a minor historical novelist who was better known as a director of Pirandello. He was an author in search of a character, and that character turned out to be Montalbano. When a protagonist becomes a phenomenon, I am always interested in whether the novelist remembers the exact moment of conception. Camilleri does: "I know exactly when he arrived. In 1994, I was stuck on a historical novel called The Brewer of Preston. I couldn't organise it the way I wanted, I had not found the key to structure it, and then decided that the best solution was to set it aside and write something else. And then I said to myself: what can I write? The way I used to write novels was to start with the very first thing that struck me about a subject.

It was not methodical: the first thing I wrote would never be the first chapter, maybe it would become the fourth or fifth chapter. Then I said: but you can write a novel from first to last chapter with a perfect order of logic. I saw the form of the thriller as a cage that does not allow you to escape. And so I began to write the first Montalbano novel – The Shape of Water." Originally, the central detective was called simply The Commissioner, but Camilleri was conscious of being influenced by the Spanish writer Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, who wrote a series about the investigator Pepe Carvalho, and so he baptised his new character in gratitude; serendipitously, Montalbano is a common Sicilian surname.

Camilleri felt finished with the story after a second novel, The Terracotta Dog, but, he explains, "I kept receiving calls from my publisher bombarding me with 'Oh no, you must give me another Montalbano' – and that's how the story of Montalbano started." Part of the success of the series has come from their popularity as summer reads, and the books may be responsible for boosting restaurant profits in holiday resorts because a signature characteristic of Montalbano is his love of food. Called to the discovery of a corpse in The Potter's Field, the policeman breaks off to ravish a picnic consisting of "a loaf, a whole tumazzo cheese and a flask of wine". "I don't think of him as greedy," explains Camilleri. "It's the same in the books of Simenon where Maigret is a man who loves good food. I think it is a sort of unconscious revenge of vitality, an affirmation of being alive in the face of continuous death. Maybe eating subconsciously expresses the pleasure of feeling alive.

A life-force." One of the pleasures of the books for English language readers, since the sequence began to appear in 2005 in Stephen Sartarelli's elegant translations, is the way they chart Italian history over the last two decades: the transition from the lira to the euro, the fluctuations in the methods and impact of the mafia, the turbulent government of Silvio Berlusconi. Had Camilleri consciously set out to use the crime novel for social commentary? "Yes, that was always my aim. In many crime novels, the events seem completely detached from the economic, political and social context in which they occur. It brings me back to the example of Maigret again. There's very little sense of the history of France in the Maigret books. There is no social fact or an event that allows the story to be dated. In my books, I deliberately decided to smuggle into a detective novel a critical commentary on my times. This also allowed me to show the progression and evolution in the character of Montalbano." In recent episodes, Montalbano has been dyspeptic about the Berlusconi years.

In August Heat, he turns a Dante quote about Italy's being "a ship without a helmsman" into a reflection on the country's having, in the media magnate turned prime minister, "a helmsman it could do without". The Paper Moon contains a paragraph-long rant about Berlusconi's rise. When these sections are quoted, Camilleri responds: "Well, look … I am proud to be one of the first signatories of the manifesto written by the Italian philosopher Norberto Bobbio , when Berlusconi decided to get into politics. In that manifesto, we were imploring Italians not to vote for him. So my anti-Berlusconism is long-established, and unfortunately we were right. Because the damage Berlusconi did was not always visible during his office, but you can see it now. These are problems that the current government of technicians has gone some way to address." In another of the recent novels, the detective complains about the external influences on the Italian state: the nation serves two masters, he complains – America and the Roman Catholic Church. "Ah. Be careful with the dates of the books," Camilleri warns.

"Montalbano novels are often published two or three years after I have written the book. That particular novel was written at the time of President Bush calling on Italy to give a hand to help America in her wars; it was the time of Tony Blair. But that the church has enormous influence on politics and Italian life is indisputable. I mean to say that our state is secular, but often forgets to be." Whereas Berlusconi and Bush have come and gone as targets in the books, the mafia has, like the Vatican, been a constant background presence. The Potter's Field opens with the detective suffering a nightmare that the mob has formed a government and is now running Italy officially rather than surreptitiously. Camilleri's determined opposition to Cosa Nostra is motivated partly by birthplace (Sicily is the motherland of the mobs) and partly by reading: his hero Sciascia wrote, in The Day of The Owl , the first anti-mafia novel, and the Montalbano books are dedicated to the same purpose. "An amazing thing happens in Italy," Camilleri says. "That we have MPs and senators involved with the mafia. They continue to be called honourable when they are not at all.

It's not far from that to taking over power. At least until some time ago – because things are fortunately changing – Montalbano's nightmare had a good chance of turning into reality. I went harder on this subject in the books than has been reflected in the TV adaptations. It was like giving a warning to my readers." He is angered by what he sees as Hollywood's glamorisation and mythologising of the mafia – the books feature sarcastic asides about The Godfather – and aims to counter this with more realistic and critical depictions. So has he ever feared the reaction of the gangsters? "The mafia is not interested in the novels. The mafia's cultural attention extends to newspapers and TV – they are not interested in fiction. The mob gave no trouble to Sciascia when he wrote The Day of the Owl. They judge works of fantasy as irrelevant." During the next question, he grabs the arm of the interpreter, Carlo Catalogna, and says: "I also wanted to add that the mafia kills journalists and not novelists." Apart from the mafia, another major Sicilian influence on the books is linguistic.

In a manner that Sartarelli's English translations capture through use of cockney and other dialects, the Montalbano novels are written in a combination of traditional Italian and the Sicilian tongue. "Yes," Camilleri explains, "I studied when Sicilians use the dialect and when the national language. The dialect is always confidential, a non-institutional relationship, intimate, a friendly atmosphere. The use of Italian language creates an immediate officialness, a distance. Italian is used to make law, to suggest intimidation, power, distance, emphasis." In a telling illustration, he recalls the anti-mafia magistrate Giovanni Falcone conducting an interrogation of a mobster known as "Joe the tanner". When Falcone began to address him in Sicilian with the words "I would like to ask you …", the gangster stopped him and insisted on speaking only in Italian rather then their shared native language. Camilleri's detective novels are notable for dealing, in a deceptively jokey and congenial tone, with dark concerns. "Humour is important to me," he acknowledges. "I don't use it only in crime novels but in my novels in other genres.

The soldier who fights the battle does not know what is the strategy of the supreme command, but a writer must know the strategy of his novel. And humour and irony are part of my strategy." Beneath the jokes, one of the recurrent concerns of the books is what it means to be a good Italian policeman. It is an assumption of British and American justice that cops remain politically neutral, supporting governments of whatever colour, but Montalbano worries that the political extremities in Italy – encompassing communist, fascist and Berlusconi administrations – may call for moral resistance and a questioning of orders. He expands on this theme: "The elements of a good policeman in Italy today are, first: to be deaf to political pressures – this is a serious situation that is often a handicap to police operations. Second: sometimes refusing to obey an order is a virtue, not a sin. Third: loyalty to your vocation and to those virtues that made you a policemen." It seemed to me that some Pirandellian techniques of theatre – such as games with structure and texts within texts – can be detected in the Montalbano books. "Yes. The theatre taught me a lot about dialogue.

When I am writing a novel, if a new character enters, I first of all write the conversation he has with another character and then describe him physically. That certainly comes from my theatre experience. But it was my TV experience that taught me the art of writing a detective story. I was the producer for Italian TV of 30 episodes of Inspector Maigret and worked closely with Diego Fabbri, the screenwriter. Fabbri used to buy five copies of the same novel. And you know in a novel, there's storyline A that starts and stops, then storyline B that starts and stops, then C when the storyline picks up on A again. And so on. He tore the pages and put all the storylines in a row, then – as if playing cards – shuffled them into a different order and wrote new link scenes. Years later, when I was writing a mystery novel, all this came back to me." In common with his creator, Montalbano is an avid reader of detective fiction.

Developments in plots remind him of a particular detail in a Maigret story; in The Track of Sand, the cop interrupts an investigation to buy an armful of Swedish crime novels, including Henning Mankell 's Wallander books. Looking around Camilleri's shelves as we talk, they seem to contain almost every major crime series, including a complete set of Ian Rankin 's Rebus books in Italian translation. Rankin, I mention, has recently announced that he is bringing back Rebus from retirement, having missed him, just as Conan Doyle had to save Sherlock Holmes from his watery death at the Reichenbach Falls, when readers protested at his demise. There have so far been 19 Montalbano novels, of which 13 have appeared in English to date. So has Camilleri given any thought to how and when the series might end? "I finished him off five years ago. That's to say, the final novel in the series of Montalbano is already written and deposited at the publishing house. When I get fed up with him or am not able to write any more, I'll tell the publisher: publish that book.

Sherlock Holmes was recovered …" – with his cigarette-free hand, he mimes the detective being pulled from the water – "but it will not be possible to recover Montalbano. In that last book, he's really finished." • Andrea Camilleri won the 2012 CWA International Dagger (for translated crime) for The Potter's Field, translated by Stephen Sartarelli. Camilleri talks to Mark Lawson in Front Row, BBC Radio 4, Monday 9 July, 7.15pm.

Question: The author Andrea Camilleri created which Sicilian detective?
Answer: (Salvo) Montalbano